Steven Pinker vs Nick Spencer: Did Christianity birth the scientific revolution?

47 thoughts on “Steven Pinker vs Nick Spencer: Did Christianity birth the scientific revolution?”

1. For the full debate (released soon), updates & bonus content sign up http://www.thebigconversation.show

2. The host mistakenly referred to science as natural theology. The sciences that deal with the material world are called the natural sciences or natural philosophy. Both science and philosophy are etymologically the same in their roots. Both are knowledge of things by their causes. Natural theology refers to the science of theology unaided by knowledge received from the First Cause (a.k.a., God).

3. I'm not sure there's a clear cut truth of the matter here, modern science in its beginning was tainted by the Christian "experience", YET we have more evidence towards the fact that the Church hampered the scientific revolution. One thing is clear: western culture isn't built on Judeo-Christian values, and crystallizing ourselves around that lie cannot BUT impoverish our identity and hinder our development. This short video is clear and concise, showing the essential points regarding this matter – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd6FgYbMffk

4. It is 2018. Drop the religious nonsense already.

5. Pinker is completely wrong and hasn't studied the vast scholary literature on the rise of science in middle ages. This is embarrassing.

6. Hurry. I want this one the most.

7. Didn't Christianity refuse scientific hypothesis such as the heliocentric model or natural selection, and doesn't it still?

8. The Scientific Revolution Begins in the 16th Century, with Christians who are Convinced:
   1. The universe was created by God.
   2.That because Human Beings are created in God's Image.
   We can understand the Universe.
   3.That learning about the creation tells us something about the creator; and
   4. That understanding the Universe is a form of Worship.

   The way they separated Religion and Science.
   Was first to acknowledge what they have in Common.
   They both try to explain the Unknown.
   The difference is:
   Religion must always take leaps of faith in it's Conclusions.
   Science must never take leaps of faith in it's Conclusions.

9. Christianity greatly curbed the brutality of the west and focused the human mind long enough that science came out of it. Sin comes from “syn”, meaning the bullseye in archery. Christians taught us that the 7 deadly sins were causing us to miss the point of life.

10. Christian individuals led it, not Christianity. If it really was Christianity, one has to wonder why it took 1500 years for Christianity to lead the scientific revolution.

11. There is a very simple way to expose Pinker’s wrong view that the enlightenment was responsible for our ‘progress’ by inventing modern science and emphasising rationality, and that is to do a bit of ‘intellectual history’. Anyone with a passing knowledge of history would know that the emergence of modern, experimental science is not a product of the enlightenment, but a direct influence of Christianity, more specifically the Protestant Reformation. The overwhelming consensus of recent scholarship, in line with more established research, is that it was so-called Christian dogma, not ‘enlightenment rationality’ that made it possible for the modern scientific revolution to take place.

    Here are a few of the religious views that made modern, empirical science possible.

    1. Modern experimental and empirical science was promoted as a method for ameliorating the fall of man – epistemic reliability reigning in error-proneness.

    2. The use of mathematics to analyse the Book of Nature as authored by a rational, creator God. In Kepler’s words, scientists would be: “ Priests of the most high God with respect to the book of nature.” Galileo made a similar point given he thought God had created the universe through mathematics. Therefore the aim of science was to think God’s thoughts after him.

    3. The Christian emphasis on the ethic of hard work meant that experimental scientific research (getting one’s hands dirty) as a virtue.

    4. Science was seen as a “Christian” way of improving people’s lives. Bacon particularly promoted this idea.

    I could go on but time and space prevent me from extending the analysis.

    See: Alexander, D. & Numbers, R. L. (2010) Biology and Ideology: From Descartes to Dawkins, London, University of Chicago Press.

    Harrison, P. (2007) The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

    Harrison, P. (2007) The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Modern Science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

12. Evolution also happened once and it’s so well accepted, but I guess we refuse it when not in our interest!

13. Discourse framed combatively as someone "vs" someone else is rather unattractive.

14. I can't take anything someone with a hairstyle like that says seriously. He looks like Bach. It's not the 17th century Mr Pinker.

15. Ancient Rome never had a scientific revolution?

16. Pinker’s comment that if it was Christianity that gave birth to modern science then this should have happened in the previous 1200 years reveals a basic error that Ernst Gombrich described as ‘the fallacy of the single cause’. Most cultural changes involve multiple causes. For example, the presence of certain technologies that were unknown in previous centuries had an influence, but it was the Christian doctrine of creation, along with other related doctrines and factors that were nested within the Christian paradigm of being that prevailed in 16-17c Europe that lead to the emergence and flourishing of modern science. Therefore Pinker’s argument is invalid. He needs to read Andrew Harrison’s scholarly research on the emergence of modern science.

17. The Big Chev Ersa Tion.

18. Great series thus far .. looking forward to this next instalment and the ones after that.

    Cheers

19. Modern science has been flourishing in spite of religion, not because of it.

20. The catalyst is called the printing press. Freedom of information.

21. Pretty sure Islam is responsible for the birth of the scientific revolution in Europe.

22. “This is not a book of intellectual history.” (Pinker’s claim for his own book – dead right).

23. Jordan Peterson addresses aspects of this in a video called "Jordan Peterson: Avoid this Deadly Trap", which is available on YouTube.

24. Friedrich Nietzsche, atheist and so-called anti-Christ, opined that the scientific revolution could only have happened in Christian Europe due to 1000+ years of Christianity emploring people to tell the truth. What he meant was that prior to Christianity virtually all peoples everywhere on earth had considered truth and lie to be equal tools to be used as needed, where needed to achieve an end. Nietsche, being a top notch theologian, understood that the one-God, one-source, and being intelligible to man claim of Christianity necessitated a unified theory of natural law. In contrast, Islam claimed Allah to be capricious and thus unknowable. In Islam, cause&effect was an illusion granted by Allah when and where he wished.

    In fact, by 17th and 18th centuries some mathmaticians in Christian Europe were claiming that God would be known best via maths. Thus from at least Bacon onwards, every empirical observation was considered to be epi-phenomena of a unified underlying structure, so each was a clue to yet more discovery that would be consistent. Such a detective's nose view simply did not exist in Islam, Hindustan or China.

25. I'm sorry but the theists arguments here are quite frankly pathetic. Europeans got there first by chance and then DOMINATED the globe via imperialism and colonialism, and that is supposed to be an argument that their success (which entailed suppressing the development of other cultures) was caused by Christianity???
    Gimme a fucking break, ad hoc ergo procter hoc…

26. No. Did some Christians like Bacon, along pantheists like Aristotle, alchemists like Newton, deists like Descartes, atheists like Hume, all chip in on the effort? Yes.

27. I'm an atheist but credit where it's due, we would still be barbarians if not for Christianity. It united our tribes, taught us to read and write, provided a rudimentary moral compass and helped pave the way for more nuanced study and learning to occur in the west. That being said, I don't think it's relevant in the modern era, we're far better off reading philosophy and studying nature as it is without introducing the supernatural fiction. Easier said than done when our capacity to unite and believe en masse in total BS has been such a beneficial evolutionary trait.

28. From what I've seen so far, this is a great channel. You've earned another subscriber.

29. I dont know why people give this topic so much weight…
    Science makes a claim about reality, religion makes a claim about reality, searching the historical record gives you context of how the claim came to be, but it doesnt address the claims itselfs

30. After the invention of the printing press and the steady drop of illiteracy , the age of enLIGHTenment, motivated by the available Scriptures, the age of reason was germinated. The preist class no longer contained the monopoly on the Word of God. They even dug up Wycliffs bones to curse him after they murdered him.
    Rank superstition was now occupying the dust bin of history and science rocketed in the "christian nations."

31. Wasn't till China partnered with America that they became developed again. Now they have one of the largest Christian populations in the world. Many Chinese Christians come to USA. Catholics are the religion that prevents scientific study. Christians are responsible for scientific breakthroughs.

32. For everyone interested in the debate, i recomend you read Sapiens, part 4: The Scientific Revolution

33. If Steven Pinker disagrees with you, you're probably wrong.

34. Anyone who doubts that Christianity was not essential to the rise of science read Rodney Starks book "How The West Won." Without Christianity and Christian scientists there would be no scientific "Revolution".

35. https://youtu.be/RmXBj2N9fhY

36. LOL, "Natural theology" — natural philosophy rather. Christians trying to take credit for Greek philosophy. However the Christians rationalize it, it is anti-Christian to philosophize. Christianity is ANTI-philosophy, i.e., anti-science and anti-thought.

    From Paul's First Epistle to Corinthians: "Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

    For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength."

    Thankfully, humans are masters of rationalizing away what isn't in their nature, hypocritical enough to cherry-pick their theology and discard what isn't in their nature. Or else we wouldn't have relied on philosophy and science to arrive at the amazing technology (such as the internet) that we have today.

    Alex Kierkegaard: 846. People ask "what has philosophy accomplished" as if their whole society isn't predicated on innoculating unwitting idiots with primitive philosophical axioms. We were feral before philosophy. All science is merely applied epistemology.

    56. Linguistic optics: the time for it has come. The idea is basically that no one (and nothing) is "wrong"; they can't be wrong because they are part of the universe, and whatever is in their brains — in the brains of even the stupidest person — is as "correct" as what's in my mind or Nietzsche's or Baudrillard's. What we need then is an art of interpretation so subtle and powerful that it can bring out the "truth" that's hiding inside even the dumbest person's brains.
    For example, when a Christian says "God created the universe and he loves me", he is not wrong. It's just that the concepts he designates with the words "God", "universe" and "love" are different from the concepts someone smart and educated, like me for instance, designates. For me the word "God", going by the Christian's definition of omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, etc., is an empty word, a non-concept, since the predicates the Christian attaches to it are incommensurate with each other. But when the Christian says "God", he doesn't really mean an "omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being" (since he's so dumb he can't even grasp what these concepts mean, and hence uses them in ape-like and parrot-like fashion); he simply means "a very powerful being". Similarly, when he says "universe" he doesn't mean what I mean by "universe" (i.e. "everything"), he simply means "the earth" — or at most, if he's had a whiff of astronomy, perhaps "the solar system". And finally, when he says "love" he doesn't mean what I mean by "love" (i.e. a desire for possession, in order to shape the thing possessed), but the exact opposite, i.e. "help me" (= shape me).
    So basically, when the Christian says "God created the universe and he loves me", what he's really saying, translated in our language, is "A very powerful being created the earth (or the solar system), and he wants to help me" — which could very well be true!
    All of this stems from Nietzsche's positive theory of language, which basically says that a word means WHAT THE SPEAKER WANTS IT TO MEAN, and has no necessary connection to any pre-existing convention between speaker and listener. Ultimately, each person gives his own meaning to every word, which is only natural since this meaning is to be found inside each person's brain, and all brains are different.

    696. "But I don't believe in anything", you say, and fancy that you've escaped our systems, but all you've done is to create your own — and a miserable and paltry one at that! For you too are the god in the center of your own system — every atheist believes in himself, in the last resort — but no one else believes in you, so your system's influencing no one and shaping nothing, while, without even realizing it — since you are so grossly uneducated, like all atheists — you are merely a believer in and soldier of the atheistic religion which some philosophers created before they learned to psychoanalyze themselves, and figured out that they are in fact their own gods and that atheism is nothing but an attack — and a puny one at that, a merely reactive attack — on the gods of others.

    849. In a philosophy that claims that everyone is always right, what meaning is there left for the concept "wrong"? What does it mean when I say that someone is wrong? It simply means that his (very correct) opinion is not useful for the task I have set myself; it doesn't help in achieving the goal that I am in the middle of pursuing and discussing.

    626. From a videogame review: "Every mystery in the setting is explained in detail before the end, and the world ends up feeling like a tiny, wretched sort of place." — A hint for those who feel that "complete knowledge" is an actually desirable goal for mankind to achieve, and that life on earth would be a lot more enjoyable if we had it.

    733. Why must all scientific theories ultimately fail to predict the future?
    Because the purpose of the future is not to be predicted, but to be experienced.
    Lichtenberg: "The greatest events are not produced, they happen." I.e. they are not the result of putting into practice a perfect plan, but rather of the sum total of all the imperfect plans that have been executed about them.

    The fact is that after the analysis is over you are supposed to close up your word-processor, put aside your books and papers, and go out there and make it happen. The book itself is the first step in that process, and certainly a very powerful one, as it is the herald call that marshals your forces for the offensive, but it is only a step. There are many other steps to it, thank god, otherwise the world would be scarcely better than a text adventure game.

    860. There's no time or place in the universe that one can't reach from any other time or place if one is intelligent enough, often without even having to move much, if at all. Since every part of the universe is connected with every other, all it takes is a sufficiently deep interpretation of the signs arriving to your location from that distant time and place, and you are there (astrophysicists can tell if there's water in a planet halfway across the galaxy by the color of a couple of dots on a computer screen). That's how God is omnipresent, and not by the subhumans' crude literal intepretation of this idea as him being literally present everywhere! And he is omniscient through his ability to infer everything, not by literally knowing everything! What would there be left to infer if one literally knew everything? Such a person would be a moron! And he is "all-powerful", finally, via his ability to affect everything to the degree that he wants to affect it, not by having literally built every object in the universe by hand one atom at a time! What an absurd conception of divinity the subhumans have! But all it signifies is how far from his level of power they themselves are.

    249. Immortality is a bogus idea that only seems credible if one has a very primitive understanding of time. More specifically, if one thinks of time as an idealized dimension that exists apart from all the rest. But we know today that time and space are inextricably bound up, so to extend oneself infinitely in time would also mean to do the same in space, i.e. to crowd out all other lifeforms and destroy them, until the only lifeform, indeed the only thing (since all things are alive) left in the entire universe would be oneself! — "And why would this not be possible for someone like an Overman?", would at this point be a fair question. — Because "no player can be greater than the game itself" (Rollerball). Because "absolute power" is a contradictio in adjecto. Because The Intelligence of Evil wouldn't let him. Because "nothing has existence in itself, nothing exists except in dual, antagonistic exchange" (Baudrillard). Take your pick. All these expressions, and many more besides, state the same thing: the fundamental rule of the game. That there must be an opponent.

    784. Evolution is inequality. Otherwise towards what are you evolving?

    813. Once more on Leibniz vs. Newton. Leibniz's God is supremely rational, but Newton's is the common Christian God whose will is "unknowable", and that's why on all the deepest issues Newton has nothing to say, but simply attributes them all to "God" — i.e. to his own ignorance.
    Lichtenberg: "Are all our conceptions of God, after all, anything more than personified incomprehensibility?"
    So, for Lichtenberg, God is a catch-all term for everything one doesn't understand. So the more one comes to understand, the smaller this sphere becomes — and therefore this God — while at the same time the ego grows at the exact same rate, and begins to demand "its own" (Stirner). Finally, right past the tipping point, where the amount of one's insight surpasses the amount of one's ignorance, calling the ignorance "God" ceases to make much sense, and using it for the insight instead — i.e. for the ego, for oneself — is the only logical thing to do. And that's how the God concept shifts from designating "personified incomprehensibility" to personified comprehensibility, and God transforms from a "holy" ghost and spirit… to flesh and blood (and metal, and circuits): to an "evil" man and superman; to me and my descendants.

37. It might be that the scientific 'proto-revolution' in antiquity was crushed by the advent of Christianity as a state religion. Hard to prove, maybe; but the subsequent stagnation seems to point in that direction.

38. Steven Pinker is very patient. I would have punched the guy for being that stupid.

39. Oh, give me a break, are you people still trying to find philosophical and religious explanations for the ‘Age of Enlightenment' and the scientific revolution? The proximal cause was simply more leisure/study time and the distal cause was a surplus both in food and commodities as a result of improvements in trade and agriculture.

40. Who cares? We now know pretty much all Christian doctrine is untrue, and the parts that aren't are unnecessary. So what if was helpful in the past? I don't live in the past I will live in the future.

41. Science is the methodology of the Universe as perceived by human senses.
    The rest of it is usually some non-sense form of policy argument for the manipulation of others +/- to justify special interests.

42. Who is this Spencer joker?

43. This guy is a serious idiot. Pinker should’ve just mentioned Aristotle and turkish mathematics and the presocratics and shit. Game over.

44. So… A doctrine of creation is what kicked off the scientific revolution. This doctrine would be the same YEC views that hinder science education in places like the USA?

45. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfaYkxAY38Q The scientific method is in Genesis.

46. Let's say it was causal. Who is to say there wouldn't be another scientific revolution? Everything was there to be discovered.

47. How many people were fooled by Pinker exhibiting the confident manner fallacy?

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